Voyager Birdman (2023)

• 80%
• 2023
• Animation
• Gerald Habarth

Voyager Birdman is a frame-by-frame experimental animation made from simple spontaneous line drawings, rotoscoped video clips, and views of the highway filmed between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Sounds of podcast voices, old radio programs, Nasa recordings, and sampled audio files carried by the Voyager space probes launched in the late 1970's merge with an unfolding stream of hand-drawn symbols, figures, abstractions, and fragments of the passing highway landscape. On one level, it's about the idea of using drawing, animation and collage to find and create meaning. More directly, it's an attempt to capture the fleeting dynamics of thoughts, memories and dreams experienced on a long night's drive - much like the virtual and untethered character of contemporary existence - and the enduring lure of an interstellar connection.